Read the text of the speech here.
President Barack Obama’s speech from the Oval Office Tuesday night was a strange muddle—a televised prime-time address that lacked a bottom line, a consistent theme, a clear road to the future.
He announced the end of combat operations in Iraq, right on schedule. But he equivocated on what comes next in that much-improved but still war-torn land.
On the one hand: “There should be no doubt the Iraqi people will have a strong partner in the United States; our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.” On the other hand: “Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it is time to turn the page.”
[…]
On the one hand: “No challenge is more essential to our security than our fight against al-Qaida.” On the other hand: “Our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. … [This] must be our central mission as a people and my central responsibility as president.”
At least there was no “Mission Accomplished” equivalent. Here’s what one ex-Bush defense official thought about it.
I think people are blaming Obama for way too much these days. For those that say he hasn’t accomplished any of his goals, well why do you blame it one him? He had the whole health care thing drawn out and then Congress screwed up the whole thing. You can’t blame Obama that people don’t have jobs, if those same people are only willing to do an office job that lets them sit on Facebook all day. The stimulus plan would have worked better if the corporations that got the money had hired workers instead of pocketing the money and reducing their staff. Now those same corporations are posting record profits. I think everyone shares the blame. With the internet we are becoming an increasingly whiny and lazy society, who would rather blame things on others instead of looking after ourselves and striving for improvement.
We as a people are better off unified instead of all of this constant squabble. If you look at Obama’s term as President so far he has tried to keep things as unified and equal as possible, and all people do is chastise him for it.
So:
Obama promotes bipartisanship
Republicans reject any bipartisanship in favor of “its our way or the highway”
MikeN takes Obama to task for not being bipartisan
MikeN then explains that it was Obamas fault for naively attempting to be bipartisan in the first place.
That’s some impressive rationalization.
This says it all.
Obama’s lame speeches on economy, Iraq
http://tinyurl.com/34pj4kb
Scott–I don’t follow any politician closely. I started reading about Ron Paul and immediately came across 3-4 positions that are his own rather than what his electorate want. They probably do the same as you: respect him.
I’ve just never thought that Politics was graded on a curve and that the least bad of the bunch got a pass. They are all self serving calculating corrupt double speaking ineffectual posers.
VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
#70
Repeat of #56 the one that Mextli had no answer for!
Beal said, on September 1st, 2010 at 11:16 am
#53 Mextli
and not revisiting the failed republican policies of the past what would you have him do?
If McCain were in office we would be just as up Sh*t creek. he has done as well as any one could better that most
Please Mextli tell us how YOU could have fixed the economy any faster?
#72 “Please Mextli tell us how YOU could have fixed the economy any faster?”
One way is to give a stimulus to small business. Ones that employ less than 500 people. They employ the most people in the country. Out of the over 700 billion stimulus how much went to help small business?
The car industry accounts for about 13 million workers. Look how much was poured into that pit and most Americans will not benefit from it’s bailout. It was simply repaying the unions.
so you would let the auto 2 out of the 3 auto makers fail go out of business and take all those jobs including the parts and distribution and dealers hmmm nope not going to get my vote.
Saying give stimulus to small business is easy, but how would you do it? I have been running my own small business since1989 so I’d like to here this one.
Just what is your plan and lowering my taxes a bit will not make much difference in my hiring, more clients spending more money would.
Propping up the banks that give us the loans was not a bad plan, looks putting more strings on the banks who got the money would have to have been necessary as they did not lend the money out. But when that was suggested and the republicans cried foul No Big GOV. meddling in our bank business.
would you have let the big banks fail too?
Face it a McCain administration would have had to much of the same crap to keep the country on life support until things pretty much sort them selves out.
I, like president obama, am a fan of Abraham Lincoln. My favorite piece of writing is the Gettysburg Address that in some ways might be said to address a similar situation.
This was no Gettysburg Address. It was verbose, muddled, and lacked both focus and internal consistency.
It was similar to what you might get if a sharp but lazy high school student did a cut and paste from several speeches to fudge a speech and then failed to edit to smooth off the rough edges.
Maybe he needs to hire some new speech writers?
# 71 Bobbo said:
“VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.”
Does that include Ron Paul? Cool!
tcc3, he could have credited Bush’s role in the surge that is allowing Obama to claim victory. Instead he said Bush loves America. Woohoo. He failed in trying to transcend partisanship, and instead was more partisan than others.
“Surge” was not successful except in letting Obama keep to the withdraw schedule Bush was forced to except to get his surge
No functioning democracy in Iraqi
we we are leaving only slightly more politely then when we left Vietnam
There was no Victory and we still have 50,000 troops there.
To much blood has been spilled for anyone to clean up the Bush Cheney mess
According to Alfred, Obama is tricking the bad guys in Iraq into giving away their positions.
It’s possible.
It always scared the Russians that Ronald Reagan actually believe the Star Wars Defense would work even when no one else thought so.
But even though this is possible, the reality is that I realized long ago Obama just wanted to be a Rockstar President going around making speeches across the world, having extravagant bashes and going on vacation.
For real.
Obama isn’t special. McCain or Hillary would have been worse.
What would be truly remarkable in this day and age would be politicians IN POWER (not in the minority) and IN OFFICE (not running for an office they don’t hold) that actually would prefer to solve the country’s problems instead of fleece it.
I’m not holding my breath.
Although I do believe a divided government that can’t get much done is at this point far preferable to what is going on now. Even then, I’m not sure how much a divided government is going to help.
>Iraq has an opportunity to create a better future for itself, and America is more secure.”
Obama when speaking to soldiers. But when speaking to the country, he decides to put politics first and not make this statement.
Or perhaps he was just lying to the soldiers.